Although the highly flexible group does perform brand-new works, it increasingly contextualizes them with earlier 20th-century pieces in contrasting styles. They can be lushly post-romantic or perkily neoclassical, even downright fun. Even new pieces tend to be picked to relate to more or less familiar musical languages. Performances are by some of the area's best instrumentalists — and occasionally vocalists.

Monday night's concert, at Southern Methodist University's Caruth Auditorium, offered a particularly appealing sequence of three pieces spanning four decades. The earliest of them was Francis Poulenc's 1922 Sonata for the unusual, but logical, trio of horn, trumpet and trombone.

The next piece, composed 20 years later, could not have been more different: the Sonata for oboe and piano by the English composer Herbert Howells (1892-1983). Sadly little known in this country apart from his Anglican church music, Howells was also a fastidious and eloquent composer of orchestral and chamber music and art songs. His music draws on French impressionism, a love of English folk songs and Renaissance choral music, all blended in an intensely personal language.

Penned in the dark days of World War II, the Oboe Sonata is predominantly lyrical, the oboe spinning out free-floating, long-breathed lines (literally) over piano writing alternately sumptuously and brightly atmospheric. The third movement is jazzier — although Howells had no fondness for jazz — with its punchy syncopations for the piano. Then, in the transition to the finale, Howells brings back the ineffably sad, longing music from the sonata's beginning.

Music of often heartbreaking beauty, it was lovingly and eloquently performed by oboist Erin Hannigan and pianist Anastasia Markina. I only wished the piano lid had been fully open, rather than just on the short stick.

The one piece of truly contemporary music was Static, by the 60-year-old American composer Sebastian Currier. Dating from 2003, it's a 30-minute sequence of six movements for two winds (flute, doubling on piccolo) and clarinet (doubling on bass clarinet), two strings (violin and cello) and piano.

The movement titles prompt expectation of different and discrete feelings: "Remote," "Ethereal," "Bipolar," "Resonant," "Charged" and "Floating." More striking is the contrast within each movement between slow, hushed, dissonant chords and more mobile gestures: pricks and puffs of sound; busy passages like controlled chaos; relatively lyric expansions by violin, cello and clarinet; agitated syncopations and high tinkles and sparkles from the piano. "Static," after all can refer to either stasis or sonic interference.

That the organic contrasts and evolutions held my attention for 30 minutes is no small compliment. The piece certainly had able and persuasive advocates in Ebonee Thomas (flute), Stephen Ahearn (clarinet), Maria Schleuning (violin), Hannah Thomas-Hollands (cello) and Liudmila Georgievskaya (piano).

Formerly staff classical music critic of The Dallas Morning News, Scott Cantrell continues covering the beat as a freelance writer. Classical music coverage at The News is supported in part by a grant from the Rubin Institute for Music Criticism, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and the Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation. The News makes all editorial decisions.